


Forgotten

by DragonsandInk



Category: Ib (Video Game)
Genre: Aged Up Ib, Can be read as Garry/Ib, Complete, Garry is terrified but still tries his best, I'll get back to you on that one, Ib's a badass, Mentions of blood and injuries, Nightmares coming alive, Older Ib, Painting, Puzzles, Somewhat of a redemption fic?, Technically no character death?, ehhhhhh, here we go again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 06:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18204533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonsandInk/pseuds/DragonsandInk
Summary: Ib's parents have finally managed to convince her to add some decoration to her apartment.  There's only ever been one painting that she ever wanted enough to have it with her every day.  Her favorite Guertena piece: The Forgotten Portrait.She hadn't considered that it was waiting for her too.





	1. Forgotten

Dappled light drifted in through white curtains and across the cement flooring, barely reaching the dusty pink rug on the other side of the room that sat at the foot of a pristine bed.  The yellow rays brought much needed color to the room, dying the white sheets and egg colored walls and giving the pink accent colors a rose gold tint to them.  The one-room studio apartment was sparsely but tastefully decorated, with buffed gold fixtures and marble countertops, a few well-kept potted plants in the corners, and a small kitchen with barely used appliances.

The stove and fridge weren’t new, but with how rarely they were used they still looked fresh out of the cellophane.  Ib had tried her hand at cooking before, even gone to a class a few times to get better, and while she wouldn’t starve if she was locked in her apartment for a week she had yet to make a single well-rounded meal for herself.  The only thing that got regular use was the back burner of her stove where a burgundy tea kettle sat, still warm from her most recent need for tea.

Ib sat on her cream colored sofa, watching the window as the sun rose.  She wasn’t so much looking at what was outside as she was appreciating the light quality that came through.  This half of the room had the sofa she sat on pushed up against the wall, a colorful cabinet in the corner, and a standing easel turned so that she got the best light from the window.  The cabinet, which was white when she first got it, was now a speckled and blotted mess, the doors having odd strokes and splatters all over it from when she rushed to get more colors out and paid no mind to the brush she still had in her hand and the sides covered in test polka dots of every color.  She had managed to save the floors by putting a painter’s cloth beneath the easel and took extra care not to get her sofa dirty, but that one piece of furniture was unable to survive the tribulations of Ib’s needy muse.  It was her favorite fixture in her apartment, if only for that reason.

This was the time of day when the light was the best.  Where colors showed facets to themselves that couldn’t be seen at noon or twilight.  Normally she would be painting at this early hour, trying to capture the sleep in her eyes or impressions of a dream on the canvas.  Her fingers itched to hold a paintbrush, but she stilled the urge.  She often fell into a sort of daze as she painted and would be dead to the world around her.  This morning she needed to listen for the door.

Taking a sip of tea—earl grey—she planned out her day.  The delivery was to take place early in the morning.  She would sign whatever she needed to, make sure the contents were still in pristine condition, then go down to the café two blocks away for some breakfast.  After filling up, she could return to her room and unleash all the pent-up inspiration in her fingers through her paint and perhaps even finish her latest piece.

Her parents had visited her recently and had been appalled by her lack of decoration or, as they called it, splendor.  She had been afraid that they had a skewed vision of how she was living since she had moved out and this more or less confirmed it.  Ib’s paintings had been making lots of money and bringing in many sponsors for her work.  Two years earlier she had been able to make rent for this apartment on her own and now she had more in her bank account than she knew what to do with.  Her parents had been proud that she was so successful in her line of passion and assumed that she was treating herself to every pleasure she could afford.  When they saw the white sheets and simple decoration they’d instantly begun to nag for her to do something to spoil herself or else they would.

Fearing that her parents would craft her a new eccentric hobby without her say she had acquiesced to buying a painting to go in the blank space above her sofa.

There came a knock from her door.  Sighing, Ib set down her tea mug on the easel stool she used more as an end table than for sitting and got to her feet.  Welcoming in the delivery folk, they wasted no time bustling the painting into the room.  It was a fairly large canvas in a steel frame from what she could tell through all the bubble wrap.  When she approved of it and signed the papers the two offered to hang the portrait for her.  She gratefully accepted and pointed them to the place above her sofa, asking if she could leave to get breakfast while they were working.  They made sure they knew where the painting was going and agreed that they would take care of it for her while she was out.  Ib wasn’t worried about them stealing anything since there wasn’t anything to take.

At the café, she ordered another cup of tea, uneasiness rolling in her for some unexplained reason.  The café sold French breakfast foods, which was why she enjoyed it so much.  A few minutes after her tea had arrived, the waitress brought two plates, one with a croissant and butter and the other with three small macaroons on it.  Ib saw this waitress almost every morning but they did not speak aside from her ordering whatever she was in the mood for and confirming the price.  Now and then Ib thought about attempting to strike up a conversation but always came to the conclusion that if the woman wanted to talk that she would have spoken up by now.  Besides, Ib didn’t mind the quiet.

After finishing the croissant she inspected the macarons.  They were raspberry, blueberry, and lemon, her favorite flavors though she rarely ordered them all at once.  For some reason she was always somewhat unnerved by the intensity of the three prime colors next to one another.  If she stared for too long, they would begin to bleed into one another until it made her head spin.  People always described red as angry though she saw it as such a fragile color.  Yellow was cheerful to most but she used it in her darkest pieces.  She could always count on agreeing with the color blue, however.  There was always a subtle sadness in the deepest depths of any blue.

She ate the yellow first, disliking the maelstrom of emotion that bubbled in her stomach.

Returning to her apartment, the delivery team was gone, having left her door closed and cleaned up any packaging materials left behind.  The room was vastly unchanged, besides the painting that now hung above her sofa, drinking in the morning rays.  She moved to stand before it, taking in the deep, navy blues and biting green.  In her chest, she felt a tightness that was all at once new and familiar.

_Forgotten Portrait_

The boy had a sense of limpness that anything living could only struggle to recreate, head hanging just slightly but kept up by the blackened thorns around his chin.  Dark vines held him up and twisted around the tattered jacket he wore, blossoms of cobalt blue roses peeking from between the branches.  Ib had always admired Guertena’s decision to make the boy’s hair a dusty lavender color, the only portrait he had done with a dyed hair, as it was distinct yet still blended well with the rest of the painting.  The boy’s eyes were perpetually closed but she liked to imagine that they were a similarly greyish color that seemed to be prevalent in the palette.

Ib had always felt a connection with Guertena’s work.  From a young age she had such strong reactions from almost every one of his pieces.  It had unnerved her at first but when her mother had explained that art was meant to draw emotion, good or bad, she had grown fascinated with them instead.  _The_ _Lady in Red_ gave her such a deep sense of fear despite the content smile on the woman’s face.  She had always described the woman as slightly deranged, searching desperately for some sense of prey.  _Embodiment of the Soul_ instilled fragility and responsibility in her that had caught her younger self off guard.

As a child, she had a deep-set repulsion of even the most benign of his statues, glad for the ropes between herself and their displays.  There weren’t many other children who visited the gallery but they would often lean as far as they could over the dividers, hoping to brush their fingertips against the stony facades.  She wanted to lurch forward and tear them away.  Warn them of the consequences of getting too close.  But her shyness prevented her from moving and while they were moving on she wondered what consequences she was trying to prevent.

The paintings did not give her the same sense of fear, besides _The Lady in Red._ Instead, they consumed within her a sort of morbid curiosity.  A certainness that getting too close could result in either a benefit or doom that had her hovering around the frames further than the others perusing the gallery.  Her parents had complimented her on how responsible she was being though she knew that staying in their good graces had nothing to do with how she kept her hands to herself.

Years later, as she grew past her childish fear, there remained a disturbing quality to most of Guertena’s creations that she could not quite explain through words.  Having just started taking advanced art classes, she absolved to expressing this through drawings.  Then through pastels.  Finally, she ended up with a paint palette and found herself spilling out her soul onto a broad canvas.  She hadn’t intended for her paintings to gather notice much less become popular and she thought perhaps it had something to do with her parent’s standing.  But because of it she had been able to go to a good university where she studied classical arts until she could tell you all about why the impressionist movement was such a changing point in society and could draw parallels between the first, second, and third renaissances until your ears bleed.

But through all that time, there was always one of Guertena’s works that stood out more than any other.  _Forgotten Portrait._ That first time she saw it she could hardly tear her eyes away, even when her mother called for her to look around the rest of the gallery together.  There was so much emotion she couldn’t comprehend as young as she was.  But as she grew older, she became more aware of the prevailing twinge in her chest and what it meant.  Despair.

This feeling was so strong and present that when her mother led her away it still overwhelmed the second sense she had.  Abandonment.  Like a seam tearing loose the further she got from the gilded frame.  As an adult, Ib was frankly stumped by these emotions.  She had tried over and over to figure out what portions of the painting brought about the turmoil in her when she saw the boy covered in thorns but could not quite figure it out.  Perhaps it was the way she could almost convince herself that the boy was just sleeping though her mind knew it wasn’t true.  Perhaps it was pity in the way his coat was so torn, combatting the side of herself that pondered if the worn-out style was on purpose.  Perhaps it was the unnecessity of the bramble holding him down since he could not move anyway.

She had a friend in her classes that she had shared some of these thoughts with.  He had suggested that perhaps the blackened plants had kept him there until he died and though she couldn’t come up with a sure reason why she knew that he was wrong.

Ib looked up at the painting now, a sort of relief in her shoulders even with the mixture of sadness that she could not shake.  The _Forgotten Portrait_ was meant to be with her.  She was the only person that it was safe with and having it so far for so long had been heart wrenching for her.

Although she took great inspiration from his paintings, it didn’t seem the rest of the world did.  Guertena’s work had been decreasing in popularity for years until the point where the company that owned the majority of his works, transporting them around the world to empty galleries to be enjoyed by the many had a hard time staying in business.  Many of the paintings had been sold to larger art museums and the statues bought out by collectors or bundled up to waste away in warehouses that didn’t deserve their genius.  Certainly, a hundred or so years from then, he would become popular again and everyone would be vying to see an original, but for now even one of his larger, if more obscure, paintings were in a price range that Ib could afford.  When her parents insisted that she do something to decorate her apartment, procuring the piece was the first thing that came to mind.

It had taken such little effort to convince the museum it was owned by to sell it to her.  Apparently it hadn’t even been on display in years as it wasn’t nearly as recognizable as, say, _Abyss of the Deep_ or even _Coughing Man._ It almost disgusted her with how little care they had for it once ownership had been transferred to her.

But here it was now.  Here _he_ was.  Safe in her apartment with her and her easel.

Ib realized she had been staring at the painting for far longer than she intended.  Having given up standing and kneeling on her couch with her arms on either side of the painting, almost squinting into the face of the boy perhaps a year or two younger than herself.  Some part of her found it strange to think of him as younger.  As if he should have been growing since the first day she’d seen him so that he would be an older adult by now.

Taking her gaze away, Ib came to the conclusion that she would not be getting much work done that day.  So she put her kettle on, set her phone to play quiet piano music, and pulled her couch around to the middle of the room instead of against the wall.  When the tea was done she settled into the white cushions and quietly watched the painting.  As if waiting for the boy to open his eyes and thank her for saving him.

 

…

 

Ib gasped awake, her heart beating in her chest like someone pounding on a door, trying desperately to get her attention.  But even with the determined banging ringing in her ears the cold sweat that rolled down her back was already grounding her back in reality.  As her heartbeat quieted, in its place she was left with the feeling that she was forgetting something.  Slipping away in the way that dreams, or in this case, nightmares do.  She rarely remembered her dreams anyway so it didn’t bother her that she couldn’t recall what had woken her up so violently but she hadn’t had such a bad nightmare since she was seventeen.

For a while when she was younger she had been suddenly gripped by recurring night terrors that would wake her up screaming and have her parents rushing into the room to comfort her.  She could only ever give a vague description of dark figures, something dripping from her walls, and fire.  The doctors had told her they were common themes in night terrors and that something external must have triggered their occurrence.  Having nothing else to blame, her family had agreed that it was belated shock of her grandmother’s passing the year before.  Ib was only too glad to have a reason why this was happening to her, even if a deep pit in her stomach told her it was wrong.

She no longer woke up screaming when terror gripped her in the night, having learned long ago how to suck in the air as she woke rather than breathe it out.  Making her parents fret over her had bothered her to no end.  Ib strived to be as unobtrusive as possible.  Having her own apartment now meant that she could wake in the middle of the night kicking and screaming without worrying anyone, but old habits were hard to break.

Ib sat up in her bed for a while, getting her breathing back under control but knowing she couldn’t immediately go back to sleep.  Instead, once the sweat had dried and her tenseness had drained away, she moved the covers aside and squished her bare toes into the fuzzy rug beneath her bed.  As she padded her way to the kitchen she considered making some tea but decided she was too tired to wait for the kettle to heat up then for tea to cool enough to drink.  There might still be some juice left over though…

Light filtered in through the thin curtains that covered the window, a softer version of the sunshine that had come through during the daytime.  Part of it was moonlight, which lent a soft roundness to the room, but the warm glow that mixed in with it was from the streetlamp outside.  It wasn’t enough light to read by, but she could make out the outlines of her furniture and move around comfortably without flipping any switches.

The juice had expired two days ago but it smelled fine so she poured out a glass anyway.  After downing half of it and deeming it acceptable she went to lounge on her couch, fully aware that she might doze off while relaxing on the cushions.  It was still turned toward the _Forgotten Portrait_ so she curiously squinted out what shapes she could in the low light.

As expected, she could make out very few details, attributed to the darker color palette the piece was made with in the first place.  Still, she could see the outline of the boy, the scant amount of pale skin standing out along with his lighter colored shoes, and the pale lavender of his hair like wet seaweed plopped down on his head.  The rest of the image was like writhing vines, crisscrossing every which way.

Perhaps it was because she had been staring at the painting all day, or perhaps it was because her nightmare had startled her into further alertness than she had thought, but it did not take long for her to notice the small difference.  Rubbing her eyes, because she thought it to be a trick of her frightened imagination rather than reality, she tried to convince herself that she was seeing things.  When it did not go away, she set the last gulps of juice down and shuffled over to the canvas to inspect it closer.  Squinting against the color of night, she ran her thumb over the frame where one of the dark streaks had appeared.  It looked almost as if someone had dragged black paint onto it in order to give it a somewhat three-dimensional sense.  The frame hadn’t been painted earlier though, of that she was certain.  Not quite believing what she saw, Ib switched on a light and inspected the frame again.  The streaks were gone.

Ib chalked it up to her nightmare affecting her imagination and thought no more of it.  But it didn’t take much thinking for unsettlement to fold over in her stomach.  Turning off the light once more and setting her used glass in the sink to take care of the next day, Ib retired to her bed.  She intended to make up for the time lost to silly dreams that she couldn’t even remember.

 

…

 

From then on, Ib was given a ghastly reminder to the years of nightmares she had as a child every night.  By the fourth night she was expecting to wake up in deep set fear with imprints of her dreams like the steam on a mirror after a shower.  The futility of trying to get a restful night was starting to impress exasperation in her as she laid motionless in bed, unable to regain the sleep she had lost.

There was nothing she could think of that could have set off the terror in her subconsciousness; she went about her days just as she always had, with an air of dignity and call for creation.  She had finished her latest piece, though it was admittedly rushed, and had set it to the side, halfway hoping she’d have the inspiration to truly finish it later.  Instead the constant presence of the _Forgotten Portrait_ had her painting new things with a darker tone to them.  Her paintings always had an impression of deeper meaning.  It had been quoted a few times that her art gave the sense of seeing through a child’s eyes at all the large and frightening things around them, which gave them such mysticism and attraction.  But with the color palette and sharp lines she painted now she was certain her latest work would shake her audience.

She wanted to capture a never-ending hallway with an infinitude of doors to open along the way.  Each room was different, the wallpaper and door changing with every new discovery, yet just like the one behind it.  An empty room with another door at the end.  Even though she was the one who had decided to paint it, her stomach couldn’t quite settle as she worked.  She got up often to make tea, watch the world pass by out the window, or stare at the _Forgotten Portrait._ It was as if she wanted to slam each open door closed until she could fool herself into thinking that something different was on the other side.  As if not being able to see it would change the conclusion.

Her heart skipped a beat as she thought that.  It was like her instincts were confirming her thoughts of conspiracy.

 _It’s just paint,_ she told herself, mixing colors on her palette.  _It’s only paint._

After the never-ending hallway, it was separation.  A single figure standing in a crowd of blurry faces, with a defined, white outline around the person.  Their hands were pressed over their ears so tightly that a smudge of red was added around their palms.  After the figure was forgetfulness.  A mess of objects turned at obscure angles and blended together so they could be anything from any time.  It gave the sense that the onlooker should know what they were seeing though they could not quite put a name to what it was.

Of course, the abstractness and dig of her new inspirations thrilled her public, the pieces getting bought out at top price almost instantly.  The money didn’t mean much.  She was just glad to have the pictures out of her apartment and out of her head.

But the disturbing images were not the worst of it.  It was the feeling that she was slowly going mad.  That she was hallucinating and her mind was gaining cracks and chinks every day.

How else could she explain the growing thorns?

Each night when she awoke from a nightmare she could not bring back into consciousness with her she would check the _Forgotten Portrait_ and see that the vines had grown just a little more.  Since that first night they had escaped the frame and started reaching their thin, twisting tendrils out onto her walls, just an inch or two at a time.  They spread out like clinging slime, but when she tried to touch them it felt like nothing was there, as if they were mere stains on the wall.  During the night, the plants thickened within the portrait as well, as if creating a wall between herself and the boy who never moved.  The blue roses seemed to be swallowed by the constricting branches they blossomed from.  After they had grown long enough, Ib had set her broom against the wall, hoping to impede the ivy’s path, only to wake up the next morning with the broom’s handle snapped in half with black paint dripping all the way down to the bristles.

Something in Ib’s heart ached at having the vines stand between herself and the boy who could do nothing to stop his wretched situation.  She had to stop and remind herself that the boy could not feel any sadness because he did not really exist.  He was dead, as was clear from the position Guertena had painted him in.  Even if telling herself this made her tear up and her chest constrict.  The sad truth was better than a naïve lie.

The thought that perhaps her nightmares had started when the _Forgotten Portrait_ had first entered her apartment occurred to her.  In fact, she had come to agree with this theory rather quickly, along with the idea that getting rid of the painting would also cure her sleeplessness as well as the creeping nightmares on her walls.  But when she had gone to take the painting down, perhaps to put it in her storage or at the very least throw a sheet over it, she couldn’t bear to go any further.  Taking it down, ignoring the problem, would be like she was abandoning the boy in the picture.  That he had been failed once by whoever had left him against that wall to die and that by turning a blind eye would only exacerbate that betrayal.

She would not leave the boy alone.  Never.

 

…

 

Ib woke with a quiet gasp, eyes immediately going to the far wall.  The vines now covered that entire side of the room, changing it into a yawning, black void with the sleeping boy at its center.  She had moved her furniture away in a vain attempt to rescue it from the creeping touch but that seemed to only egg on its growth.  Onto the ceiling and spilling across the floor.  Ib wondered how long it would take for it to reach her bed.

Then she saw it.

If the moonlight hadn’t been right she wouldn’t have and left it alone until worriedly moving it in the morning.  But the moon was just so in her apartment that she could see a single tendril curling possessively over her art cabinet.  Its sharp edges stood out among the colorful smears it was otherwise decorated with, mocking Ib in the lowlight.

She felt something then which was so powerful that even though she was wholly unacquainted with it she could not slow its sudden torrent.  It bubbled up from her stomach to flint dangerously in her fiery eyes and send her sheets thrown into the air.

_Fury._

It encompassed her and fueled her actions as she stomped across her floor and threw open her cabinet full of paints.  Scrambling with shaking fingers, she managed to get her palette out and squirt several colors on it, hardly even noticing which ones she chose. Taking up one of her favorite broad brushes, she swept to the offending streak and maliciously began to paint over it.

A grim satisfaction took over her as she covered the ivy with her random assortment, mixing her brush into a gloopy brown.  This was _her_ apartment.  _Her_ cabinet.  And _her_ boy in the painting.  By the time she was finished she was breathing heavily, rebellion against this foreign invader swelling up inside of her.  Turning, her heart sank once again as she compared it to the whole wall that blared down at her and realized how small of a victory it was.

Then, as she struggled to come up with a permanent solution, the vines began to _writhe._

As if possessed with an equal amount of hatred and loathing for her as she had for them, the thorns tore themselves from the wall, swelling in size and length as they twisted about her room.  The door was immediately blocked off, her bed constricted and torn within a few seconds, the sound of crunching metal and creaking wood as all her kitchen utilities were crushed.  A dirty mug was thrown from her easel stool, shattering on the concrete floor near Ib’s feet and making her rapidly scatter from it, having no shoes on to protect her from the sharp ceramic.

Something grabbed her by the ankles, sweeping her feet out from under her.  Ib expected to land on a painful bed of thorns or crack her head against the floor.  She did not expect to fall into an endless hole of darkness, witnessing her lit window grow farther and farther away.

 

…

 

When Ib woke up, she was immediately aware of the fact that she was no longer home.  The lights were too unnatural to come from the sunlight that graced her room, the coarse carpet beneath her feet did not give off the same coolness of her cement floors, and the calming colors on the walls did not match the pure white she was so used to.  The only similarity was the acrid smell of paint in the air, which did little to settle her fears.

Sitting up, she assessed her surroundings a little closer.  Behind her was a dead end.  Looking at it made a shiver run up her spine.  The sudden cut off did not quite match with the rest of the hallway it resided in, as if the walls were meant to continue on but someone had built a wall in the way in order to block off whatever was further down.  It gave off an air of oppression and Ib decided not to linger for too long.  The rest of the hall seemed normal, with lights at proper intervals and even a desk only a few paces away from where she had woken up.  On the ground nearby was her palette, fantastically having landed face up, and her brush, which was now somehow clean.  At the other end of the hall, just out of proper sight, was a large frame, housing bright colors of red, green, and peach.

Unnerved and confused, she gathered up her things from the floor and went to inspect the desk, the sight of it setting off a ring of familiarity although she did not know where from.  There was a feather pen and an empty guest log sitting on the table.  The writing at the top made Ib freeze and consider whether this was one of her nightmares, the words striking an ice into her veins.

_Welcome to the Guertena Art Gallery_

“This must be a dream,” she told herself out loud.  The words echoed off the walls perfectly, in a way that couldn’t be duplicated outside of reality.  The hollowness of her own excuse rang in her ears uncomfortably.   Ib tried to think of a way to tell whether she was dreaming or not.  Pinching elicited a small bit of pain, as expected, and looking away from the ledger and back again did not change the words written there.

Feeling more and more disturbed, she eventually had to admit it to herself.  “This isn’t a dream…”

Nothing had happened, no sounds had been uttered and nothing had so much as moved, and yet a crawling sensation had appeared across her skin, a warning that she was in a place that she should not be.  Ib inspected the guest log one more time, hesitating for only a moment before picking up the pen and putting her name and the number one down next to it.  If nothing else, she would be able to tell that she had already been in the otherwise non-descript hallway once before and that it was where she started out.  After that was done, she continued toward the painting on the far end, hoping that she would quickly find the exit to this place.

 _Stay calm,_ she told herself, following some of the breathing tricks her therapist had taught her when she was young.  _You are in control.  You are strong.  Nothing is around to hurt you._

That last phrase did not ring as true as she had hoped it would.  The idea seemed to bounce off her mind like putty off an invisible wall.  This place had shown nothing to her thus far that even had the capacity to hurt her and yet some deep well inside her whispered to be careful and beware the edges.  As if she were being guided by the voice of a fairy, Ib’s feet led her to the painting on the wall until she stood before it, at a T in the hall.

The details had made themselves clearer as she got closer to it, but now she stared up at it with a certain amount of puzzlement.  It was _Embodiment of Spirit._ But rather than the statue she knew its true form to be, it was in a painting so large she could almost believe someone had taken the real thing and shoved it into a canvas.  The petals were pristine, of a dark red hue, and crisply clung to the stalk.  Then, as she watched, one of the petals _snapped_ and began to fall like a leaf in autumn.  As it fell it shrunk and Ib watched with rapt attention as it drifted out of its frame to land on her palette.  Trapped in a state of awe, she could only witness as the petal blossomed into a full flower, cradled by the mess of colors in her hand.

Gently, she took the flower and it came away clean, just as vibrant and full as the rose in the canvas before her.  The sight of it made a headache pound against the inside of her skull but the safety and relief that came from it gave her the immediate sense that this was a good thing.  Carefully, she tucked it into the thumb hold of her palette and held it tightly, letting out a deep breath that expelled some of the simmering wrongness that this place had instilled in her.  She noticed a plaque to the right of the painting then and went to read it.

_Remember Ib_

Remember what?

Just as quickly, the unsettlement was back and she sighed hopelessly.  All there was to do for it was to leave this place as quickly as possible.

Picking a random direction, she started off in what she hoped was the way toward the exit.  Instead, she started to see why this place was called a gallery.  Paintings were hung carefully on walls, most of the time harmless and unmoving though she could feel eyes watching her each time she passed them.  Statues were set out on display, thick velvet robes keeping imaginary visitors from getting too close.  _The Taste Cleansing Tree_ gave off a thick scent of taffy that made her mouth salivate and _The Juggler_ laughed as she passed, voice echoing out as if he were trapped in a box though he gave no indication that he disliked his position.

“ _Welcome back, little lady.”_

It all sent shivers running up her spine and a near constant headache.  It was as if someone had an ice pick and was slowly trying to carve their way out of her skull.  Or perhaps she was wrong and they were trying to get _in._ Everything was washed with the same taste of familiarity that bothered her more than the moving paintings did.  Something about flat pictures being given life seemed almost natural to her, a fact which also confounded her senses and expectations.

Four rooms, two puzzles, and a key she had to collect from hanging upside down from an abstract ladder sculpture later she made it to what she guessed to be a showroom.  Unlike the other rooms, where it seemed that whispers followed her within the walls, this was dead silent.  Creeping forward cautiously, Ib nearly jumped out of her skin when a quiet voice came from just behind her.

“ _Hey you.”_

She whipped around, seeing no one there, but noticing the pair of bright red lips set into the wall like a cliff climbing handhold.  Other than watching for movement she had passed by it with little thought.  Now when she thought about it, it made sense that the lips could talk.

“ _Yeah, you.  Maybe you can shut that guy up.  He’s incorrigible.”_

Ib came closer to the lips, though something inside warned her not to touch them lest she get bitten.  But the fixture seemed to have said its peace and would not move again, even with some gentle questions and encouragements.  So she turned around and continued into the room, only to stop in her tracks when she noticed the main painting on display.

Because it was not another one of Guertena’s works.  It was _hers._

 _Scream_ had been bought at top dollar perhaps three weeks ago, as soon as it had dried enough to leave her apartment safely.  The inspiration had come just after she had done _Lonesome_ and wanted to continue on the same thread of thinking.  It started with half a person’s face, scrunched in pain and crushing one hand over their ear in a similar position to the shadowed figure in _Lonesome._ On the other side of the painting, taking up most of the space, was another person, done in harsh lighting and jagged lines, with their mouth open in what seemed to be silent rage.  She could still remember the faint ringing of sound that had persisted in her ears while painting the scene, hoping that the intensity of the picture persisted the same far away sound on any others who observed it.

But why was it here?

After a moment, she realized it was not her memory of sound that her ears were picking up, but actual sound.  It seemed as if the rest of the room held its breath as it increased, as if someone was shouting from the top of their lungs at the end of a cave while sprinting toward the opening.  The noise grew louder and louder until Ib had to drop her palette and throw her hands over her ears.  The scream increased, so loud and piercing that she couldn’t hear herself think, as if she were standing in front of a speaker the size of a door and it wailed the highest and most shattering pitches known to man.  She wasn’t sure if her ears were bleeding or if she was just imagining it anymore.

Glancing down, she watched with horror as a petal stripped itself from her red flower.

Ib knew she had to think quickly.  There was no way out of the room besides where she had come from, but she couldn’t take her hands off her ears long enough to retrieve her palette and escape without risking the loss of her hearing.  The answer came to her so suddenly she almost didn’t trust it.  But this was _her_ painting.  And therefore, she could alter it.  Right?

Taking a leap of faith, she pounced on her palette, trying not to reel from the dizzying sensation that the piercing noise gave her.  Quickly and without finesse, she gathered as much silver onto her brush as she could and smeared it across the mouth of the screamer.  The sound died down with every brush stroke, as if she were covering it with strips of duct tape until there was only a muffled sound she could barely make out past the ringing in her ears.

After a moment, the other person in the painting dropped their hands and sagged with relief, then disappeared from the frame.  Ib followed them around the room as they jumped from frame to frame until they ended in one a little larger than herself where they pulled a key out from a non-existent pocket.  They fiddled with it for a bit until it seemed to stick.  A moment later, the frame swung open, revealing a door that had been hidden all along.

Still shaken from the experience of her own painting trying to kill her with sound, Ib stumbled toward the door, wishing that it would open back up into her apartment and she could leave all this behind.  Instead, she was in another hallway, the wall colors a shade darker than they had been before and one of the lights flickering from lack of maintenance.  She didn’t want to, but it was the only way forward.

Traveling on, she tried not to think too hard about why her painting was in this place.  It was supposed to be Guertena’s gallery, right?  True, her work took heavy inspiration from his, but that gave no real reason why it was there.  Unless the people who had been buying her works were adding it to this horrid assortment of living pictures.  Though that didn’t make sense either.  If someone was doing all this, then wouldn’t she have seen someone by now?  Or gotten even the slightest hint that other people had walked through here before?

So wrapped up in these thoughts, she almost didn’t notice the first vine appear on the wall.  Heart thumping heavily in her chest, Ib stared at the thing that looked too similar to the ones that had been haunting her nights for the past month.  It wasn’t just paint on a wall, but a thick, spiny tendril that caused cracks in the walls where its thorns held it up, yet it was unmistakable.  Knowing what this meant, Ib picked up her pace, following the increasing volume of them until she came to a wide hallway almost overrun by the things.

And there, in the center of it all, leaning against a wall beneath a large, gilded frame, was the boy.

He looked exactly like he always did, wrapped in bramble and slumped over, heavy with either sleep or death.  The only differences now were the frame set into the wall above him, dark and spilling out the ivy that kept him captive, and a blue rose that wrapped itself so tightly around his hand that the tiny spikes in the stem drew blood.

The sound of her heart in her ears, Ib got as close as she dared, the memory of her room coming alive still fresh.  She stared down at the boy, voice caught in her throat and searching for any sign of life.  Red eyes boring holes in him, willing movement, she did not miss the faint twitch of his fingers.

Taking that as all the evidence she needed, Ib did not waste another second of hesitation.  She stomped forward, kicking vines out the way with a sneer of disgust until she was close enough to start pulling them off the boy.  It was a bit precarious, hooking her thumb through the hold in her palette while avoiding thorns as she tore up the thin branches but she didn’t trust the tendrils not to come to life again and possibly steal away the only source of protection she had.  Such thinking was not her top priority in any case.  Ib could barely even see past the determined flood of wanting to release the boy and became laser focused on her task.  Eventually she had nearly stripped everything away from his limbs, all the way down to the tight collar around his neck.  She moved to finish, unwinding the rose from around his wrist and nearly jumped out of her skin when his hand grabbed her wrist.

Letting out a small gasp, she met a grey gaze that was trained on her, confusion and fear swirling tumultuously in its stormy depths.

And remembered.

“Garry?” she asked quietly, recognizing the sleepy fog that hovered around his expression now that she wasn’t as startled.  But it was him, totally and completely.  He was the one who had been with her in the Gallery before, when she was so much younger.  He was the one who had protected her from the many nightmares all the paintings and statues had presented when they had been unwillingly sucked into a different realm.  He was the one who had given up his flower so that she could be safe.  The one she had left behind.  The one she had forgotten.

Now, he glanced every which way, clearly not understanding where he was, and squeezed her hand tighter as panic slowly sunk in.

“I’m—wha—where am—”

In response, she threw her arms around him, so unbelievably relieved and happy.  A weight had been lifted from her chest, a sadness she couldn’t place from a loved one she couldn’t remember.  At the same time, the headache that had been building released with a sigh.  She now recognized it as her memories of a time that never really existed trying to escape from whatever cage they had been shoved into.

She had forgotten.  _How_ could she have forgotten?

Garry had gone still and quiet in her arms, but when she pulled back to see if he was okay she saw him fiercely trying to piece things together.  He met her eyes, recognition sparking there followed closely by more confusion.

“I…Ib?”

Ib nodded quickly, enough that her hair went flying in all directions.

“I…I don’t…how are you—”  He had lifted a hand to comb through his hair and winced when he scraped the thorns of his rose across his face.  “What—?  What is happening?”

She opened her mouth to tell him, explain things as best she could though she only had a vague idea of how this happened as well, but stopped.  The hair on the back of her neck rose with a sense of danger.  Casting about, she saw the vines twitching, not quite the storm that had caught her up earlier but clearly no longer dormant.  They couldn’t stay there.

Getting to her feet, she grabbed the hand that didn’t have the flower protectively curling around it and tugged Garry up as well.  He followed her lead and a surge of gladness for how quick he was to trust her filled her, even though she looked vastly different from the twelve-year-old self he remembered.  She led him through the maze of black limbs, not blaming him as he stumbled on unused feet and leaned on her heavily.  Whatever had happened to him, he had been asleep for a long time.

“Ib?”

“We need to get somewhere safe.”

That seemed to be good enough for him.  Casting nervous glances backwards, the two exited the hallway before their enemies could take a hold of them again.

They ducked into the first door that they came across, finding a room with four easels set up and an empty stage in the center.  It reminded Ib of her early art classes where they would have a model stand in the center and everyone would be expected to paint the same image from different angles.  She was always too heavy handed with her shadows and had been chastised for it in front of her peers, but it was that exact ratio of darkness that had enthralled the professional critics.

Her heart sank a little as she realized the truth of Guertena’s influence on her work.  The reason for her fears and tumultuous emotion when observing his many art pieces.  It was her memories, trying to claw their way back to the surface.  She had convinced herself that she was simply moved by the images and ideas he presented when it was so much more.

Garry sunk down on one of the stools, his head falling in his hands as his breath quickened.  Realizing he was in distress and she had been standing there like a statue for however many minutes, Ib picked up another stool and carried it over.  Sitting in front of him, their knees bumped, which drew him out of his own introspection.  When he lifted his head she stared intensely at him, hoping to exude some sort of relief and peace toward him.

“U-umm…”  He looked away, combing his other hand through his hair a couple of times before sighing and turning back to her.  “Ib…You _are_ Ib, right?”  She nodded again.  “Okay…okay.”  He blew out a frustrated breath.  “Why are you…taller?  And in pajamas?  Did something happen?  A painting?  Where did Mary go?  Did you get my rose back for me?  When did we end up in all those vines?  Am I—am I forgetting something?  It feels like I…”

He gripped the sides of his head, as if all the questions and pressure were too much.  Worry overwhelmed Ib, wanting to help but unsure how to comfort him.  She patted his knee gently and patiently waited for him to think things out.

“Please, just…tell me what happened?”

She didn’t really want to recall the exact details of what happened the last time she was in the Gallery.  Even if it had happened a long time ago, the memories were fresh again.  But she did so to the best of her ability for Garry.  She tried not to delve too much into detail about how he had collapsed against the wall soon after insisting she go on without him but explained how she had taken his lighter from his pocket and, when threatened by Mary, had burned her portrait.  Her parents had confiscated the lighter when she had pulled it out, confused on where it had come from.  He confirmed the tale when he searched his coat pocket and found it was missing.

Bashfully, and with no small amount of frustration toward herself, she admitted that after returning to reality she had immediately forgotten all the details of the Gallery.  It was as if the time between when she first saw _Fabricated World_ and jumped through it hadn’t existed and she had gone on with life.  Quickly, she tried to amend by saying that she had been trying to find an adult to come help him, thinking she could get her mom or dad to follow her into the Gallery again and get Garry to wake up.  He was disturbed by what she was telling him, but managed a forgiving smile, saying she was very young and that it was what any sensible person would do when faced with that sort of situation.

Ib didn’t feel much better but didn’t voice this to him.

Buying his portrait and the nightly terrors (which she connected to be her old memories trying to get out) were explained more thoroughly.  The vines climbing on her walls and her attempt to drive them back which only ended in being drawn back into the Gallery.  She told him of the paintings she had seen thus far and how she had managed to silence her own painting with the palette she had brought with her on accident.  He agreed that she should save her paint as much as possible for whatever dangers would present themselves during their search for the exit.

“I suppose…the situation could have ended worse,” he said with a wobbly smile, fidgeting with his fingers and chewing on his cheek.  She was sure she remembered him doing much of the same the first time they had traversed the Gallery, as well as fiddling with the wheel on his lighter, but her younger mind had not thought of them as giveaways.  He had just been Garry.  Silly Garry who was easily spooked but very tall and strong.  Now that she was older, Ib could recognize the nervous habits he exuded.  She wanted to assure him that they would escape together this time, so help her she would burn every painting in this nightmarish place, including her own.

The thin veil of positivity dropped as he hesitated to ask his next question.  But, seeing as Ib wasn’t about to interrupt, he eventually did.  “Ib…you look much older now than you were before.  How much time has passed, exactly?”

It was her turn to fidget, drawing her thumb over the bristles of her brush and keeping her gaze trained on the blank canvas’ set up on the easels.  She twitched to put something on them, but now was not the time.  “…Ten years.”

She didn’t see his reaction, though she had a pretty good idea of what it would be.  He had been woefully accepting of everything she had told him thus far, unable to disbelieve her even though they both wished she had been lying.  Instead she checked her rose, it’s silky petals a bright blush when set amidst the rainbow of other colors on her palette.

Ib was calculating exactly how many different colors she could get out of what was left there when Garry let out a heavy breath, as if he had been holding it this whole time.

“Okay…I…”  He went silent again.  Ib did not interrupt.  “I can…think about that later.”  She peered up to see him fighting not to fall into shambles.  Like a lonely fisherman, paddling with all his strength to outrun an inevitable typhoon.  Bottling this up probably wasn’t a good idea and she was about to tell him this when he shook his head.  “We should focus on finding the exit to this place, first and foremost.  We can think about what all this means after we’re safe.”

Although she was still worried about him, it made a flower of pleasure bloom in her chest when he said ‘we’.  He was trusting her to help him through whatever difficulties there were to come.  Even if she didn’t deserve it, he wanted her to be there for him.  This time, she would not let him down.

Nodding her consent, she gestured to the door and he caught on without her having to say anything.

“Yeah, let’s go.  Thanks to you, we don’t have to worry about Mary any longer so leaving should be easier this time.”  They got up from their stools and headed towards the door.  Garry had automatically switched to walking just behind her once again, like he had all those years ago.  He was still a fair bit taller than her, even though she was pretty certain she was now technically older than him, and it was nice to have his presence at her back.

Her confidence had began to rise up again until the handle refused to budge.

The feeling draining out of her, she sighed and said, “Locked.”

“What?  Really?”  She moved out of the way and allowed him to try it himself, throwing his weight against the door that might as well be a wall now.  He groaned and melted a little.  “Just our luck!  Locked into the first room we find!”

As he lamented, Ib surveyed the room once more but found nothing out of place.  There wasn’t even a bookshelf in the corner as there so often were in the other rooms.  Going to one of the easels she tried picking up the canvas and found it stuck to the easel, which was nailed to the floor.  She immediately thought of it as suspicious since she had been able to move the stool with ease.  Peering around, she was, again, reminded of her model class and hesitantly decided that the resemblance might not be a coincidence.

Going back to Garry, she gently pushed him toward the dais.

“Uh, did you figure something out?”

She had him settle on the stage and he curiously watched as she returned to the easel and took up her paintbrush.  Then frowned as she examined him again.

“Is anything the matter?” he asked, unable to help the tired smile tugging at his lips.  Despite how she had clearly grown in the time he was asleep she still acted just like she had as a child.

Ib huffed and gestured with her hands a bit before saying, “Pose, please.”

He laughed gently, her reluctance to say anything out loud reminding him _exactly_ of the small girl that would stare at him until he managed to guess what it was she was thinking.  She pouted for a moment, but then clearly was trying to hide a smile.  Garry tried a few poses, either being rejected by Ib or quitting moments after as he couldn’t find his balance or knew he would get tired of it too quickly.  Eventually, he settled on a “screwing in a lightbulb” position that Ib agreed with and tried to stay still as she worked.

It was strange to see Ib so much older.  She still had rounded cheeks that gave her the visage of youth and her height made her into a petite form.  The pajamas she was wearing were pink with white polka dots and were very soft.  White, fluffy socks adorned her feet and her long, straight hair was swept over one shoulder, going just past her elbows.  If he had to guess, he would have pegged her at around eighteen, but if she was telling the truth and a decade had passed then she was probably more likely around the age of twenty-two.  He tried not to wilt at that thought.  Ib had been out and about, growing and enjoying life while what had he been doing?  Sleeping?

There was an echoing _click_ that they both had come to recognize as the sound of a door being unlocked or a puzzle solved.  Then the floor flew out from under Garry’s feet.

Ib didn’t have time to do anything but drop her jaw as her friend disappeared.  Instead, she immediately scrambled forward to the edge of the pit that had opened up where the stage was and leaned over the edge.  There was a chasm that stretched out infinitely in front of her, seemingly pulsating with darkness.

Setting her jaw and checking to make sure her rose was still safely tucked into her palette was all the hesitance Ib spared before jumping in after him.

Expecting a hard landing, Ib tried to keep herself from falling headfirst and clutched her few belongings to her chest.  It was impossible to tell whether her eyes were open or closed as she continued her descent and eventually settled on squeezing them closed and hoping for the best.

With a soft _whumf_ her fall was halted.  Ib compared the landing to when she was a child and her parents would toss her onto their bed in a game of flight.  Sighing in relief, she found she had sunk into a mass of purple and mahogany pillows.  Each was a circle and were connected by thickly braided, brown-green stems like a bunch of sunken balloons.  Rolling to get out of the mass of color, she winced as something hard dug into her side.  With an annoyed scowl, Ib felt around in a pillow and found there to be what she assumed to be a rock in the middle of it.  All the pillows had rocks in them.  By the time she escaped their soft prison to examine them all bundled up she realized why.

 _Prelude to Wine Sofa._ Or, a giant mass of grapes that never was shown in galleries in the real world.  Mostly because people couldn’t help themselves from touching it and the curators were worried about being unable to clean or repair the original piece.  Ib would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about fondling it herself.

Long-standing curiosity satisfied, she inspected the room she was in, expecting to find Garry groaning on his face somewhere nearby.  When his form was not readily apparent among the other few statues in the room she frowned.  A pit of worry growing in her stomach, Ib went back to the grapes and searched through them, hoping he had sunk between their gaps and elected to remain there in defeat.  Or, heaven forbid, she had landed on him and knocked him out without even noticing.

The search turned up no purple-haired boy and she began to become anxious.  Nothing good ever came from the two of them being separated in this place.  Now that she remembered what she had done, Ib had a grand sense of protectiveness over Garry; the need to redeem his abandonment by helping him to finally escape from the Gallery.  But she couldn’t do that if she didn’t even know where he was.

Quickly, she crossed over to the only door, which opened easily.  The room it led her to was plain and achingly familiar.  There was a chair against one wall, plain backed and wooden, sandy carpet, another small desk with a guest log, and an unassuming door opposite from her.  What made her stop was the wallpaper.  A light chartreuse color with a bronze fir de lis pattern going up it in precise strokes.  She knew those strokes well, since she was the one who painted them.

Gritting her teeth, she paid no heed to the few items in the area and went to open the door.  It led to a near exact replica of the last room, the same dimensions, a chair, a desk, carpet, and wallpaper, but all in a sleek, modern style instead.  The next room was Italian renaissance, the next art neveaux, the next traditional Japanese, the next sloppy teenager.  The rooms went on and on, each door different from the last but promising the same future.

Ib’s heart beat heavily in her chest as she tried to recall what she had been _thinking_ while making that painting.  Now that she could remember her nightmares she recognized it as following the script of a monster chasing after her and the doors doing nothing to shield her.  There were no heavy footsteps or the pounding of a fist on the doors behind her, but the need to push forward was no less frantic.

No, wait.  That’s what it wanted, wasn’t it?

Against her screaming instincts, Ib stopped in the next room, minimalist in style, and cast around.  It was just like the last hundred rooms she had passed through with little furniture and seamless foundation.  But there had to be something more.  The trick to endless hallways was to make your own exit.

An idea sparked and she took up her palette once again.  Pushing the chair out of the way, she used the edge of her brush to gather up the bronze she had not yet found a use for and carefully applied it to the white wall.  It didn’t take much and she soon had a door knob painted on the wall.  Holding her breath and hoping this worked, Ib reached out and impossibly grasped it.

The wall creaked open, clearly displeased that it was being used in an unintended way.  Not giving herself a moment to celebrate, she slipped through the passage and firmly shut it behind her, breathing a sigh of relief.  She was in another generic area of the Gallery.  There was a spitting portrait on the wall, a couple of bookcases on one side, and thus far benign paintings hanging up around the well-lit room.  Ib knew better than to assume the area was safe, so she kept an eye out even when heading over to one of the two visible doors.

Thanks to her paranoia, she was able to spot the form hiding behind the bookcase easily.

Ib let out a sigh of relief and gently padded over so she was crouched a short distance away.  Garry had his head between his knees and his arms over his neck, squished into the corner of the wall and bookcase.  Wherever he had ended up after being spit out of the hole must have really shaken him.  There wasn’t a time she could remember him reacting quite like this so either whatever he had run into was really bad or it was a culmination of everything that had happened in the last few hours.

“Garry?” she called out, knowing better than to try and touch him while he was trapped in his own head.

He still flinched, but raised his head and relaxed when he came face to face with her deep, wine red eyes.  “Ib!” he said, quickly swiping at his face.  “I’m so sorry, are you alright?”

She nodded and inclined her head.

“I’m…” he took a breath, “I’m fine.  That last room was just…”  He threw a wavering gaze toward the door on the far wall.  “It was a lot.  I’m sorry if I worried you.”

Huffing, Ib jabbed him in the shoulder a bit.  “I’m not a kid.”

That seemed to jar him out of his misery a little.  “Hah, yes, of course.  You…don’t require me to protect you any longer, huh?”

She smiled, recalling grabbing him by the hand and leading him through a rope maze when he was too panicked to pick a way to go.  But there were also plenty of times where he swept her into a princess carry and used his long legs to sprint away from paintings that jumped off the walls at them.  “I’ll return the favor.”

Nodding, he swiped at his eyes one more time before standing.  “Okay…well, waiting around here won’t do us any good.  We should keep moving.”  Ib hurried to her feet as well as Garry seemed to take in the room for the first time.  “It looks like there’s only one more door.  Is that where you came from, Ib?”

She shook her head and pointed to the blank wall she had cheated her way through.  “I made a door.”

Surprise etched his face.  “Made one?  Was it part of a puzzle or…”

It took her a moment to realize that he had trailed off for her to fill in the blanks.  Garry was patient with waiting for her to answer though and she didn’t feel rushed to explain the endless hallway and how she had escaped.  They leaned against the back of the bookcases, Garry pensive and Ib fighting off an itch to go see what was behind the door that Garry had come from.

“You mentioned before that you had seen another one of your paintings in the Gallery,” he said slowly, as if giving her the chance to correct him.  He continued when she didn’t speak up.  “This is the second one that you’ve been able to interact directly with by using your paint.  I wonder if you’re being drawn to them, or vice versa.  Are there any others you think might show up and cause us issue?”

Ib thought about the many paintings she had been churning out since the beginning of her career.  Very few had been made without at least a smidge of negative emotions guiding their design.  And the amount she could imagine would do harm if ran into…  “…Too many.”

Garry gave her a look of worry, though it didn’t seem to be angled toward their situation.  She scrunched her eyebrows as a prompt to say what was on his mind.  “Ah, Ib…perhaps when you get out of here you should try painting happier things?”

She frowned, the idea of choosing what to paint rather than just pouring out whatever was in her soul a stuttering one.  Although, much of what she painted was a direct result of not being able to remember her past.  Now that she knew what it was that had affected her so deeply…maybe she could move on.  Still, breaking through that block in her mind that refused to move on toward the future would be a process.

“Ah, just a thought,” Garry said awkwardly when she didn’t reply for a long time.  “But we know at least that you can handle them if we come across your paintings, right?  How much paint do you have left?”

Ib shifted to show her palette to him; she had learned a while ago that no matter what angle she tilted it at the paint would not slide off the surface, as if it had dried or been sculpted into place.  Most of the palette was used.  Some of the copper was left as well as a bright red, orange, yellow, and green.  She had already used most of what was on there before even falling back into the Gallery and since had used up all the grey to silence the painting before, the blue and purple to paint Garry’s pose, and the majority of the copper to make a door handle.

They both stared at what little they had left of their only weapon in this place before Garry coughed lightly.  “Let’s try to use it as a last resort then, shall we?”  She nodded in agreement and they charged on what to do next.  Next, they checked their roses—Ib’s was fine but Garry’s had gone down by two petals, which he said was caused by the fall from earlier—and began to inspect the room a little closer before heading into the next area.  Neither had to mention that was what they were doing, they simply started inspecting everything, never any farther than five feet from one another in case something decided to pop out and try to bite the other’s head off.

The books held very little information.  Most were standard sketch or scribble books, some long-winded autobiographies, a few with works of art from several different artists, and one or two with vapid descriptions about the Gallery and its many rules.  Ib thought they might have some good information or even a hint on how to escape and started flipping through the pages.  Garry was pulling out the books from the shelves and stacking them up on the floor neatly, hoping to find a switch or note hiding behind the many spines.

Most of the book was filled with thinly veiled threats of “you can’t leave don’t even try” so Ib ended up skimming the majority of it.  She found several chapters dedicated to Guertena, starting with what read as worship and ending with cursing his very existence.  She flipped toward the end chapters, finding a whole section about the dangers of fire in the Gallery and strictly forbidding it.  Lighters were mentioned specifically and were even bolded and in all caps.

**NO LIGHTERS EVER.**

Squeamishness trickling up her arms, she moved on, searching for the words “escape” or “exit.”  She snagged on the word “leave” and quickly backed up to the beginning of the paragraph.

_The Gallery is not open to visitors.  There are only so many seats at the table, as they say, and only so many frames and stands.  Should any visitors find themselves visiting the Gallery they will be required to leave post haste.  Visitors are not welcome in the Gallery and their existence as such will be contested by those who live in its recesses.  A visitor may leave the Gallery at any time they so choose, provided they leave through the appropriate exits.  No permissions exist which allows a visitor to take any of the art pieces from the Gallery outside of the building.  This includes any statues, paintings, or abstract existences and projections as such.  Any lack of adherence to this rule must be taken up with the FILTHY DIRTY **UGLY HORRIBLE ABANDONER **owner of the Gallery in order to have a payment made out.  Visitors are asked to exit in the same fashion they arrived or use the main entrance.  All visitors are asked to mark their visit in the guest log and check out before leaving._

Ib frowned at the page, trying to wrap her head around what it was saying.  If you came to the Gallery as a “visitor” you could not take any of the artwork back with you.  That seemed straightforward enough.  It made sense that she couldn’t bring a living painting back with her anyway.  But then why had Mary seemed so interested in the world outside the Gallery?  Was she somehow exempt from the rule?  Perhaps because she had been trying to leave by herself rather than being taking the rule didn’t apply?  It seemed like a silly loophole but she couldn’t think of why else Mary seemed so sure that she could leave.

But then why had Mary had to wait for Ib and Garry to appear?  Why hadn’t she left the Gallery far sooner if she could “steal” herself through to the real world?  Did she have to wait for the exit to open by someone coming in?  But then why bother trying to kill them?  Why go to such lengths to steal their roses and attempt to trap them in the Gallery?

She knew they were connected: Mary’s want to leave and her efforts to trap them in the Gallery, but couldn’t quite piece together an explanation with the information she had.  Perhaps she should discuss the issue out loud?  But then again, they shouldn’t have to worry about something like that anymore because Mary was gone…right?

Disturbed, she decided it was better to talk over it with Garry.  He had done a solid job of taking all the books out, making several stacks higher than the shelves themselves, and was now patting around, searching for hidden buttons while she quietly read.  All at once, her stomach dropped out from her.

Mary had…killed him, right?

That was what happened.  She had torn off every petal from his rose and stomped on the stem with a sickening grin on her face.  It was because of her that he had been trapped in the Gallery for a decade.  It was a miracle that he was awake and walking around now, probably having to do with the surreal environment of the Gallery itself, and a gift she would not scorn.  But reminding him of the girl that had cursed him to losing so much time probably wasn’t the best idea while he was still reeling from everything that had happened when he was asleep.

Ib looked down at her feet.  She had seen Mary burn.  Had set fire to the canvas herself and watched the girl turn to ash.  And in the real world, for all the time she spent looking over Guertena’s works she could not recall there ever being a mention of the girl in the green dress.  There was no way that Mary still existed.  Burning her portrait had erased her existence from every inch of reality, the only pieces of her left being the memories that Ib and Garry still had of her.  It wasn’t fair of her to drag Garry’s thoughts into such a dark pit at the moment.

She hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped what he was doing until he spoke up.  “Have you found something we need to progress?”

“No,” she said hesitantly, thumb running nervously across the page she still had open.  Scanning the rest of the paragraphs held no more mention of the exit or how to find it.  Perhaps everything in the book was a waste of time, written by someone gone mad.  Her mind flashed to Mary again and her stomach squirmed.  Closing the book, she added it to the top of one of the stacks she could reach.  “Maybe there’s something else in here.”

In agreement, they checked the paintings in the room.  One rather rudely demanded a story to be told to help it sleep and they ignored it.  The others were landscapes or gently moving pictures with nothing to say and the last did its very best to spit in their eyes when they got too close.  Deciding there was nothing for it, the two checked the door they hadn’t yet explored.  And immediately slammed it shut when several headless statues swiveled in their direction.  Going back to the painting that wanted a story they tried their best to find what it wanted.  Garry hurried through his stacks of books examining them for anything vaguely story-like while Ib told a few short ones from her childhood.  After a while they were running out of ideas.

Garry noticed when Ib’s deep thinking turned into disturbed hesitation.  “What’s the matter?”

Going out on a limb, she told the story of Careless Carrie.

The painting fell asleep shortly after the end of the story, leaving Garry to fix Ib with a horrified stare and the question of where she’d heard that story before.  Ib made a vague gesture toward their surroundings and he let it drop.

Not long after, the painting began to cry piles of sand as if it were a broken hourglass.  The two pondered over how filling the room with piles of sand was going to help them.  Ib realized that she was nodding, her eyes falling closed with tiredness.  That was strange though, since she had been fully awake just a minute ago.  Pointing this out to Garry led to them experimenting a bit with the sand and coming to the conclusion that it was indeed the reason why they were tired.

For a while they stood around uneasily, putting off what they knew they had to do.  But progressing was impossible without going through the statue room and they had a more-or-less sound plan of action so they could not wait long.

Ib was tasked with holding the painting up so that Garry could let the sand pool in his hands and throw the piles of it at the statues, effectively making them stutter and stop as if they had lost all choice of momentum.  He threw them like snowballs at all their approaching pursuers, little squeaks of fear escaping when one got too close while Ib used every trick in the book to keep herself awake.  She had settled on biting her arm intermittently, seeing as her hands were too occupied to pinch herself.  They made it through the shadowy room without losing anymore petals, conveniently finding a blank spot on the wall with a nail and a plaque that read _Sandman_ underneath to put the painting just before exiting.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if all the statues were in there and we didn’t have to worry about them again?” Garry said while rubbing the sleep away.  Miraculously, none of the sand had remained on them once they had left the room.  They had decided to take a moment to wake up before progressing.  If something jumped out at them they would both prefer not to fumble their reaction times.

Ib had immediately recognized one of her paintings again.  It was pretty hard to miss, in fact, since its effects were floating around the room like bubbles on a light wind.  Objects of various shapes and sizes that slowly shifted between different colors and forms.  It was like watching clouds on a breezy day, changing what they wanted to be at a moment’s notice.  She watched as a blob was blown out from the painting, starting in a pastel green and vaguely resembling a teapot before it started to squish down and darken, reminding her of a cooking pan instead.  Garry went over to inspect the name, dodging the items with extreme care, but Ib already knew that it wasn’t dangerous.  _Memory of a Dream_ had been made with more fleeting frustration followed by quiet contemplation than anything.

What had caught her attention was the opposite wall from the door they had come through.  After noting the floating objects she had been a bit jolted by how different the structure of the room was from any other they’d been in.  The ceiling was tall, almost four times taller than any other they had been in thus far.  On one side there was what looked like a rock climbing wall, thick stones of browns and greys stretching up to an open window at the top, dead ivy climbing along the cracks like pencil markings through a paper maze.  At the bottom of the wall was a pile of yellow…hair?  Surely it wasn’t real hair, but the metaphor was obvious in any case.  Peering up through the window, Ib halfway expected to see a short haired blonde watching them from on high.

Realizing what she was _really_ searching for, she felt queasy.

“I believe they are safe,” Garry announced, pushing what looked like a lazy garden snake away from him.  It changed into an amorphous blob for only a moment before reminding him of a pair of scissors.

Ib nodded, not bothering to say that she’d already known that, and inspected the stones closer.  She was a bit disappointed by the fact that the stones were just paint rather than handholds to climb with, but the vines were solid.  Frowning at their limp, browned state, she tried to grasp one in her hands.  It broke off easily from the rest of the strand it attached to and, while in her hand, turned to ash.  One of the blobs nearby floated closer and bounced off the pile the ivy had left behind, cleaning the spot in an instant.

“What happened?” Garry asked, though Ib didn’t have an answer.  They searched the room a little more thoroughly before making any hasty decisions.  There was nothing behind the frame of the painting, no secret buttons on the wall, and the paint wouldn’t even chip away from the wall of stones.  Garry had pulled off his coat and was trying to bundle up several of the blobs in hopes that they could float him up to the top but they had about the same carry capacity as a cloud did.  Ib sifted through the pile of ‘hair’, faintly hoping for a needle in a haystack situation.  Which was why she was surprised when she actually found something.

She pulled out a gold key, in the same color as the hair and a light gleam to it.  The two happily thought they had solved whatever puzzle the room presented for a bit before realizing that there wasn’t anything to insert the key into.  They tried using it on the door they had left behind but it wouldn’t fit in the lock.  Sticking the key into the blobs was like shoving a fork into a bowl of jello and gave both an awkward sense of violation.  Still nothing.  The window at the top of the rock wall was open as well, so it wouldn’t do any good there.

Garry urged Ib to hold onto it, but when she admitted she had no pockets he ended up keeping it in his pocket.  He clearly didn’t like the idea of him holding onto it though Ib couldn’t figure out why.  Well, all she had to do was make sure they didn’t get separated again and she would always have access to it as well.

Eventually, they had exhausted nearly all their options and Garry let out a long sigh.  “I hate to say it but…perhaps we need to use your paint again, Ib?”

She nodded, having come to the same conclusion.  As far as she was aware, it wasn’t normal for a room to have a solution that didn’t exist somewhere in the room itself or surrounding areas but this would mark the forth time her paint was only way to escape.  Had the Gallery changed to match the tools she had at her disposal or had it just become crueler with no intended solution to any of the rooms?  Neither answer sounded good.

“What should we use it on?” she asked, trying to come up with a logical use for any of the colors she had.

“Perhaps…make a hot air balloon?” Garry suggested with a hopeful smile.  When Ib raised an eyebrow at him he sighed.  “Alright, maybe that’s too straightforward…Ah, how about painting a trampoline onto the floor?”

That wasn’t a terrible idea, but Ib didn’t have any of the colors necessary to make a convincing patch of bouncy material.  What could she do with red?  Cherries, strawberries, a lobster, poinsettias, roses…  She shook her head of that trail of thought.  It had occurred to her before that she could try and paint more petals onto her rose but she was too afraid of doing damage to it somehow instead.  Moving on to the orange on her palette came up with a similarly frustrating lack of ideas.  If she could finagle the use of orange into rope…then it wouldn’t get them anywhere.  If their situation could be solved with some rope then they could use the piled up hair for that.

“Ah,” Garry said suddenly, his expression lighting up.  Ib was relieved that he had thought of something since her own thought process was clearly getting her nowhere.  “What about your green?  Do you think you could make more vines and we can climb up those?”

It was a solid idea, and far better than any she had come up with.  Nodding her consent, she went to the wall and loaded her paintbrush up with green.  Making a snaking line between the stones yielded no result and Garry deflated, but it had given her another idea.  She painted over the dead plants, making it so that at a glance it seemed to have a patch of life between all the other limp feelers.  There wasn’t any immediate change but she noticed after a bit that the green was spreading beyond where her paintbrush touched and, as she added more paint, the swell of health grew at a faster rate.  By the time she had used all the green, the ivy had regrown halfway up the wall and was steadily climbing.

Garry clapped.  “How clever!  Looks like we’ll be moving on soon enough.  Ah, although I wish more rooms were like this.”  He turned to a blob that had floated close, as if curious as to what they were doing.  It was in the shape of an octopus with pink tentacles tentatively reaching out to flick his hair up but shifted into an orange tabby cat when he gently pushed it away.

They stood for a bit, allowing themselves to relax at knowing they had an escape route from the room and they were currently safe.  Ib was starting to feel drowsy, a dull reminder that she’d been woken up in the middle of the night and had been running around ever since.  Leaning against the wall, she allowed her eyes to slip closed, relying on Garry to alert her on when it was time to go.

“Say, Ib?”

She hummed to let him know she was listening.

“Just a silly thought but it does occur to me…if only one of us could leave this place, what do you suppose we should do?”

The words sent such a sharp jolt of horror and dismay through her spine that it chased away all the comfort she had been basking in.  She snapped straight again, making Garry jump in surprise, visible eye wide.  He looked like he had been caught kicking a mannequin head, all at once regretting his actions and remorseful that she had seen him.  She wasn’t really paying attention though, because her attention had gone back to the window at the top of the room.

No blonde watching them with a dead blue gaze.

“Ah, Ib?”  She turned back to her friend again, who had regained some of his composure and seemed ashamed.  “N-nevermind about that.  It’s a silly question anyway since we’ll both be leaving.”

Ib didn’t hesitate.  “You.”

“H-huh?”

“I’d let you leave.  No…I’m getting you out.  No matter what.  Even if I had to stay here forever I want to get you out of here.”

Rather than the happy expression she expected, he seemed to crumple.  “I-is that so?  But you have family waiting for you outside.  A life to get back to.”

She shook her head.  “I’m not going to abandon you again.  I couldn’t live with myself.”

He didn’t seem convinced but nodded anyway.  “I understand.”  Garry did his best to draw up a thankful smile, though it shook rather clearly.  “Thank you, Ib.”

The small upturn of her lips was sincere.  She nodded then checked on the vines.  They were all green now and there was no reason to keep dawdling.  They went back and forth between who would go first for a while.  Well, Garry went back and forth between who should go first.  He first insisted she go first so he could catch her if she fell.  Then took it back in the next breath as he realized there might be something dangerous at the top.  Then changed his mind again when the idea came to him that the window might close behind the first person to go through and the other would be trapped.  Then again when he feared the plants might snap and send whoever had been relying on them tumbling to the ground.

Ib eventually made the decision for him by starting to climb the wall herself.  When she heard a yelp beneath her she knew that he was following closely.

The next room wasn’t a room but a hallway.  Hallways felt safer than rooms.  Fewer surprises.  More options of places to go, fewer paintings to jump out of their frames and chase after them.  Hearing her name called through the window, she leaned back out to help Garry through.  He was breathing pretty heavily and had to take a minute before moving on.  Ib had expected him to say he was out of shape (he had been asleep for almost a decade after all) but when she gave a quizzical tilt of her head he bashfully explained that he was afraid of heights.

Something about him having such a regular fear in the veritable house of horrors soothed her nerves.  She patted his shoulder, perhaps a little robotically since she wasn’t used to offering comfort or touch, until he coughed and said he was ready to move on.  Walking on, Ib was relieved when they came across a door to their right.  It was locked, but at least it meant they wouldn’t be trapped in a loop of halls again.  A while later they found a fork in the hall and tried the way to the left.  There were frames set up at varying intervals.  Different sizes, colors, and styles stood out, but every single one was empty.  They weren’t like Mary’s frame, which still held a canvas that had been torn in the middle as if someone had jumped through—they were mere frames, like an exhibition one might see at a modern art gallery.  Their plaques were even set up, but the pieces had no name and none could be removed from their places.  The door at the end of the hall was locked as well, despite their best efforts, and they went down the other way.

Things continued in much this same manner for a while.  Hallway after hallway.  Lock after lock.  Painting after painting that for some reason didn’t want to kill them.

An obvious shiver climbed its way up Garry’s spine.  “I cannot tell if I’m glad that we are not currently being chased or if it’s just making me more worried than before.”

Ib knew her answer for that one.  She couldn’t dismiss the premonition that this was all leading up to something.

She really hated it when she was right.

When they turned the next corner, both stopped in their tracks.  At the end of the hall, black thorns climbed up the walls and across the floor like creeping darkness.  Neither moved for a moment, fearful that they’d been caught somehow and that even breathing would encourage the vines to come alive, even if they were two doors and a branching hallway away.

When there came no movement, Ib grabbed Garry’s arm and dragged him backwards to where they’d come from.  “There was another hall this way we haven’t checked.”  He didn’t say anything.  She already knew that checking the other way was bound to be a fruitless endeavor but she would not—could not—drag him back into the briars that had kept him prisoner for all these years.  She had promised to protect him, to take him home, and she was _not_ about to put him in jeopardy again.

Garry was silent, but followed willfully.  The other hall brought them more empty portraits and locked doors, though Ib was willing to work a bit harder at the locks now that she had proper motivation.  She asked Garry if he had a pin of some sort on him, which he shook his head no to.  She didn’t know how to pick locks but she was fairly sure she was determined enough to get it to work anyway.  Eventually she ended up tugging on the doorknob, bracing her foot against the wall and pulling.  Her socks made her slide and she stumbled a couple of times before Garry regained his bearings and offered to do it for her.

Despite his thin frame, Garry had muscle.  Although perhaps Ib shouldn’t have been that surprised seeing as he was able to move the solid stone statues around.  Not with ease, but it still left something to be said.  There was a creak of wood as he pulled with all his strength until with a _CRACK_ he fell backwards and the door flew open.

Elated, Ib helped her friend up first, who was rubbing his head after bumping his head on the carpeted ground.  Which meant she saw his expression fall when he refocused.  “Ib…”

Following his gaze, Ib checked through the open doorway and saw the wall it led to.  Her heart dropped into her stomach at the sight.  But she wasn’t about to give up.  Clenching her teeth, she gathered up her palette and took in the colors she had left.  The yellow was a bit too bright to seem like metal but maybe it would still work to make another door as she had in the endless hallway before?  The red and orange were pretty bright too, maybe if she used them together she could make fire and burn down the wall?

“Ib,” Garry said, still seated on the ground.  She turned around, ready for ideas, but only saw the defeated slouch to his shoulders.  He stared at the ground with despondency, although it seemed he was fighting to keep his real emotions from cracking through.  “I think we have to go through those things to get out.”

Her heart wrenched, but she knew it was true.  The Gallery hated them; why wouldn’t it want to toy with them?  The vines gave her a _bad_ feeling but there wasn’t much else they could do, was there?  They may as well be prepared if they were going to have to walk through that cave of nightmares.

Nodding, she went over to Garry and extended a hand to help him up.  Newfound courage entered her, even if it wasn’t wanted.  “Let’s go.”

He glanced up at her, destitute gaze transforming into awe as she set her face into one of fearlessness.  He took her hand and allowed her to help him to his feet, wobbling only slightly before regaining his bearings.  Ib led the way, as always, and he hovered by her shoulder.  How could she be so strong?  How could she look the worst the Gallery could throw at them dead on and decide not to be afraid?  He was glad she couldn’t see his expression since it was a sad mix of gratitude and jealousy.  She had always been like that.  Since when they first met in the Gallery.  Doing whatever she could to help and always taking the first step forward.

He knew that, time paradoxes notwithstanding, they had only known each other for maybe three days.  But he felt like he knew more about her than he had known of anyone else in his life.  He wished they could get to know each other more.  Share secrets, tell stories, catch each other up on their lives and help in any way that they could.  Ib wasn’t a little girl anymore but he still wanted to take her to get macaroons and put everything they had gone through behind them.  He wanted to see her happy, not resolute.  He wanted them to finally, _finally,_ be safe.

So when they came back to the hallway with the thorns and she reached out a tentative hand he immediately took it and gave her fingers a squeeze of encouragement.  She spared him a faint smile before the they stepped over the first vine and descended.

The hall itself was decorated just like every one before, with empty frames, locked doorways, and sconces.  But the blackened plants spread across every surface like cracks on glass;  draping across the carpet, strangling the wall hangings, and casting dark shadows from where they crawled across the lights.  Hand in hand, Garry and Ib tip-toed around, gently trying door handles and watching out for any kind of change in their surroundings.  They didn’t say anything out loud, as if the nest were sleeping and the slightest peep would send it into wakefulness.

As the bramble became thicker and finding places to put their feet so that it wouldn’t disturb the creeping briar turned increasingly difficult, Ib realized that the hallway was changing as they walked.  She wasn’t entirely sure why, but the walls went from complimentary, warm colors and wallpaper to off-white tones and paint.  The carpet shifted into a fine grey and the sconces switched to soft, overhead lighting.  It wasn’t until they reached a window that she realized why it all seemed so familiar.  It was _her_ window.  The window from her room outside of the Gallery.  It reflected like a mirror rather than showing a way out and was covered in the dangerous ivy, but the shape of the sill and length of the curtains were unmistakable.

Hope and confidence swelling in her chest, she gripped Garry’s hand tighter and led him further into the tangle of black vines until they came across an area where they could no longer see the floors from their density.  They grew in a tight knot against one side of the hallway.  If they inspected closely enough they could see slow shifting within the shadows that gave off the perception that it was breathing, or perhaps beating like a distorted heart.  Twisted together in a deadly cage of thorns and negative energy, it was something so horrific that could only possibly exist in the Gallery.

They stopped at the edge of its territory but Ib was antsy now.  The signs of her room had to mean that they were _so close_ to the exit but the appearance of the heart made her want to get as far away from the area as she could.

Garry tugged on her sleeve and leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath hot against her neck.  “We should turn around, perhaps we missed a door before?”  His voice was as soft as a cloud but thick as fog with fear.  His attention hadn’t left the heart since it had come into view and a nearly imperceptible whimper was caught at the back of his throat.

But Ib shook her head and stood on her tiptoes to whisper back, “We should run.  The exit is that way.  I know it.”

He didn’t look so sure.  His attention was fleeting, trying to train on her but never staying there for long, darting around them in fear as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.  Ib took his face in her hands, pulling his head down toward her so she could try and share some of her confidence.

 _We’ll get out of this,_ her eyes said.

After a moment of hesitance, his replied, _I trust you._

Their fingers found one another again and this time they held on tighter than ever.  For a moment, Ib regarded the minefield in front of them, planning the best route she could that would keep them as far from the heart as possible while also going through the thinner areas so they wouldn’t be as likely to trip or step on any thorns.  It was going to be tricky, but when was anything in the Gallery ever easy?

So they ran.

As soon as her foot touched a vine they all came to life.  Writhing as if they had been scorched, every tendril that had previously been lounging on the ground or climbing up the walls whipped away from its surface in a blind frenzy.  Ib used one arm to cover her face from the wild lashes but kept the other firmly tied to Garry.  They might lose some petals from this, but they had both stayed in good condition this whole time and had plenty of rose to spare for such a situation.  Pushing through was their only option at this point and that was what she intended on doing.

“ _Ib!”_

With a horrifying wrench of her stomach, Ib felt Garry’s fingers slip from her own by an inch.  She stopped running and turned so she could dig her fingernails into his palm.  The bramble was not just attacking him as they were with her, but were angrily grabbing at his arms and legs, spikes digging into his jacket and snagging on his hair.  He was urgently trying to pull them off and bat them away at the same time with little success.  Ib moved to help him, heart racing to get away from their attackers.

Using one hand to pull them off was almost useless, pulling one vine away only for two to take its place.  Pulling her hand out from his grip allowed both of them to more successfully fight off the angry creature, but it wasn’t enough.  One tendril that slithered around his chest.  One second where she wasn’t fast enough.  One quick pull and he was gone within the storm of thorns and shadows.

It was like all the air in her lungs had been taken with him.  Ib lunged forward without thinking, hoping to follow and instead running into a wall of stubborn briar.  Throwing all her weight them did nothing and she was starting to become frantic when the other vines retracted into a thick shield around the heart where Garry had been dragged into.

She had to do something!  She couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ let him be taken from her again!

Her palette was simultaneously her last line of defense and her only weapon.  Red, orange, yellow. _Red, orange, yellow._

_Red._

_Orange._

_Yellow._

Images of a burning frame, burning paper, a girl her age _burning, burning_ flickered in her head.  These vines weren’t real.  They could burn.  She would **burn them.**

Quickly and with shaking fingers, Ib swirled the paint together and gathered as much of it up in her paintbrush as she could.  Before she could figure out how to ignite that spark in it though, the vines descended again.

They were fast and precise, like the strike of a snake or the _pop_ of a gun, lashing around her arm and curling up her fingers.  She cried out as the thorns dug into her skin, drawing blood in long scrapes as it tightened its hold until tears pooled in her eyes.  Then with a _snap_ they retracted.

Ib gasped for breath, biting her lip around the pain as the splinters of her paintbrush fell from her injured hand.  The bristles were shedding from the band, the paint disappearing as it hit the floor, and the staff was in pieces, drops of blood smeared across the surface from where she’d been holding it.

No!  _No!_ That had been her only hope!  How was she supposed to…

Before the hopelessness could truly grip her, she realized there was one more option.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Ib fumbled her rose out from the finger grip in her palette, numb to the tiny thorns digging into her already injured palm.  There was no telling what this would do, but if it gave her a chance to save Garry then she didn’t care.

Before she could think twice, Ib gathered up all the remaining paint, the swirl of bright, hot colors soaking into the deep red of her rose.

The Gallery would _not_ win against her.

 

…

 

Garry gasped for breath in the dark.

The last thing he’d seen was Ib’s face, desperation clawing into her previously determined expression as she tried to help him escape from the grasp of the thorns.  His own confidence had drained away the moment they’d stepped into that last hallway.  But Ib had remained cool and strong through it all.  In that moment, as she looked him in the eyes and silently reassured him, he had decided that even if his entire being shook with fear he would follow that girl to the ends of the earth.

Turns out, the end was closer than he’d thought.

He’d known there was some uneasy connection between himself and these demon plants.  Obviously, since he had woken up in a bed of them when Ib had found him.  Seeing the heart of them all had sent a bolt of _wrongness_ through him, like witnessing your own grave or being presented with your murder weapon.  He had wanted to tuck in his tail and return to the safer halls, even if they led nowhere and the two would be doomed to wandering the Gallery until the end of time.  But he knew Ib was right.  There was nothing to be gained from running away.

Though, it was hard not to regret being brave at the moment.  After being dragged into the cocoon of jabbing points and constricting ivy, one of them had wrapped around his throat and was doing its best to squeeze the life out of him.  The edges of his vision were pulsing with invisible light as his head became more and more fuzzy.  He focused on the thought that the vines were likely only after him and not Ib.  If they left her alone now that they had successfully captured him then he’d be okay with all this.  If Ib could still escape then maybe this wasn’t all for naught.

The tangle of bramble and darkness had mostly gone still since he had given up struggling, but all at once they began to move again.  The briar slowly released its chokehold at first before suddenly writhing.  Thorns whipped against his face, staggering a breath back into him enough to break him out of the dizzy fog he’d been falling into.

Unsure of what was happening but understanding he had a chance now to get away, Garry began wriggling again until he could pull at the limp tendrils around his neck and arms with new vigor.

Beyond the thick darkness, he could see a warm light growing brighter and brighter.  Maybe it was because of the stolen oxygen, but it took him an absurdly long time to realize it was _fire._   He struggled frantically as the flames traced up the vines like the fuse for a bomb.  When it reached the ones around him, rather than the excruciating feeling of his skin begin to char there was only a sense of warmth along where it touched him.

 _Not real fire,_ he concluded.  Stopping the wild wriggling, he allowed the heat to burn away his captors, reducing them to ash which he brushed off with a sneer.  The heart was being swallowed by the flames, producing silent screams as it shrunk against the wall in a blazing inferno.  Garry didn’t have time to appreciate their demise.  There were much more important things at stake.

“Ib!”

Surely the flames had been her doing.  And yet he had not heard her voice or seen her chocolate brown hair yet.  Could she have gotten hurt?  Perhaps not by the fire but the ugly plants which it ate away at?  He was in no good shape from them himself though he didn’t dare check to see how many petals his rose had left.  It didn’t matter.  Ten petals or one—he would not pause his search for Ib.

Breaking out of the writhing mass of burning tendrils, he immediately locked onto a form on the floor.  Hair splayed around her head like a pool of blood and knees drawn up in an attempt to protect herself.  On the floor nearby, her paintbrush laid broken into splinters and bristles spread out like trimmings on a barber shop floor.  Fearing the worst, he rushed to her side, gently shaking her shoulder and sweeping the locks away from her face to watch her expression.

Ib didn’t flinch as he called her name.  Light from the fire danced on her pale face and eyelashes, but they did not flutter with wakefulness.  Touching her cheek, her skin was cold, as if she had been sleeping in the snow and all the warmth had left her.  Fearing the worst, Garry cast about for her rose, searching for the wine red flower.

He froze.

Clutched between bloody, broken fingers was her rose, or what was left of it.  The petals were mere husks of what they had been, black and charred.  The only red he could see were the tiny stubs that had escaped whatever demise had been planned for them, clinging forlornly to the stem with what little life they had left.  The only indication that she was still alive at all was the stem of the flower, which was still strong and green.

Garry was horrified.  How did this happen?  It looked like it had been burned but when the flames had touched him it had been with a caressing warmth so it didn’t make sense that it would have burned her.  But what other explanation could there be?

He needed to help her.  Pulling off his jacket, he quickly wrapped her freezing limbs in the garment, hoping it would help her in any small way.  Then, gently as he was able, he gathered her into his arms, folding her undamaged fingers over the stem of her rose to keep it safe.  Back during their first visit to the Gallery there had been vases interspersed through the rooms that their roses could heal from, but he hadn’t seen any this time.  He didn’t want to carry Ib around potentially dangerous areas while searching for a magically healing vase that may or may not exist but he couldn’t leave her there either.

How was any of this real?  How had they been the ones chosen to suffer like this?  What had either of them ever done to deserve any of this?

Lamenting their fates, Garry turned to glare at the thorns, fully intending to blame them for all the wrongness that had happened to them.  The heart was gone.  Reduced entirely to cinders with the unnatural speed that only imitation fire could produce.  There laid a carpet of ashes in the hall, settling down with no wind to stir them up; the only testament to the existence of the heart.

Now that it was gone, he could see what it had been protecting so steadfastly, what it had been trying to drag him back to.  With a shiver he recognized the frame as the one he had been sitting under when Ib found him.  The origin of the vines which had relocated itself at some point.  Or perhaps the one he’d been sleeping beneath was a copy of this one?  In any case, the ornate frame was now empty, just like all the others they’d seen in the hall.  He cast a single, hesitant glance backward and tried not to dwell on it.

Further down the hall he could now see what Ib had been so sure was beyond the heart.  Set against a dead end was a cabinet, about as tall as he was with two swinging doors.  He might not have thought much of it, but it was clearly different from the decorations the Gallery usually had.  The entire cabinet had probably been white at some point in time, but someone had treated it carelessly, smearing a bucket’s worth of paint all over the surface of it, most particularly around the handles and on the side.  It had none of the purpose any of the pieces of the Gallery had.  The coloring was thoughtless, a collage of life, unintended and raw.  It was perhaps more beautiful than anything he had witnessed in the Gallery before.

As he approached it he realized that his legs were shaking.  Despite how he had wanted to carry Ib to safety he could probably only manage to get them to the end of the hall.  He was still heavily torn up from the thorns and light headed from being strangled.  Maybe he could rest for a while and once they’d both woken up they could decide what to do next.

“That’s mine.”

The quiet voice coming from his arms would have made him jump if he’d had the energy for it.  Instead, he looked down to see Ib had woken up, though a haze seemed to cling around her eyes.  She was staring at the cabinet, steady in her assertation of its color and shape.

“It’s yours?” he asked anyway, because she seemed as if she might still be dreaming.

She nodded, tiny and almost imperceptible.  “From the real world.  My art cabinet.”

From the _real world._ Meaning it was a connection.  Meaning it might just be their way out.

Relief creeping into his shoulders, Garry shifted Ib in his arms so that he could pull the doors open.  The inside was empty, painted a pristine white and just big enough for one person to curl up inside.  Gently, he settled Ib inside, encouraging her to draw her legs up and wincing with her when it clearly caused her pain.

She frowned, having realized that he could not fit with her.  Fixing him with a powerful gaze, she willed him to take her out and get in first instead.

Garry let out a nervous chuckle.  “I’ll go in right after you, okay?  You can’t really move on your own right now anyway, correct?”

Ib pouted, knowing he was right.  She barely had the energy to remain awake at this point let alone crawl into a cabinet by herself.  So instead of insisting she made a small gesture for him to lean down.

A blossom of worry started up in his chest as he got closer only to go still as she pressed her lips to his cheek.

“I’ll see you soon, right?”

His heart twisted as he smiled.  “Yes, of course.”

Ib gave a tired smile back to him before leaning back in the cabinet, fingers caressing the remains of her rose.  “Okay.”

Garry closed the doors.  Then leaned his forehead against them.

He didn’t need the _whoosh_ or sparkle of magic to know that she was gone.  It was the aching absence of her presence that let him know she had finally gone home.  She was _finally_ safe.  He stood there for a bit, leaning most of his weight against the wooden structure and allowing himself to bask in the knowledge that he had helped her get out.

Eventually, he gave a lackluster tug at the door knobs.  They stayed shut.

Giving a watery laugh, instead of trying again, he simply sunk to the floor so he could lean against it.  He’d known, of course, that he couldn’t leave.  He’d noticed immediately that the blue rose wrapped around his wrist was as fake as Mary’s had once been.  He’d quietly come to the conclusion that he had died the last time Ib had been to the Gallery, when the little blond girl had ripped every cobalt petal from the stem that represented his life.  It had only been confirmed when he had been separated from Ib after the studio room and the paintings there talked to him.

They had told him that he was now a resident of the Gallery, not a visitor as he once had been.  He was, essentially, the same as Mary had been, with his own portrait hanging up somewhere that he belonged to.  The paintings said not all was lost though.  If he wanted to leave the Gallery he still could.  He just had to take the right of existence in the real world away from someone who truly belonged there.  For instance, he could leave so long as Ib stayed trapped there.

The revelation had sent him running from that room in a blind panic.  He had curled up against a bookcase and wished with all his being that it wasn’t real that _none of this was real_ and he didn’t have to make such an impossible decision.

Then Ib had found him and gently coaxed him out from his spiraling panic attack.  She had assured him that they would make it out and that she’d protect him.

He couldn’t possibly do anything to hurt her.  Let alone trap her in this place in his stead.

Garry knew that he was probably dooming himself to live in the Gallery for eternity.  It wasn’t going to be easy, but he knew that even if he had escaped instead that he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself for betraying Ib like that.

Closing his eyes, he rested his head against Ib’s cabinet; the only link he had to her and the outside world.

Maybe one day it would open for him.

 

…

 

Ib blinked.  What had she been doing again?

The sun was barely up, the quivering rays barely reaching her window and snaking through her curtains.  It wasn’t an odd time for her to be awake, but she had her favorite paintbrush in her hand and a palette filled with paint in the other.  Had she been painting something?  But there was barely enough light to see by let alone paint with…

Setting down the utensils on her stool next to a dirty mug she’d forgotten about from the day before, Ib realized she was wearing something over her pajamas.  A ratty, deep purple jacket with frayed edging that was far too oversized for her to have bought for herself.  She didn’t remember borrowing it from any of her friends or her mother’s closet.  Maybe someone had left it at her apartment when they came to visit?  But why was she wearing it?  And…why was it so warm…

Unsettled, Ib hugged herself.  Something was off.  Her apartment seemed unchanged as far as she could tell.  Despite how she’d had a brush and a palette in her hands the canvas set up on her easel was blank.  The only other thing out of place was her bed sheets which were still mussed up from her sleep.  She always made her bed after getting up so why had she not bothered to do so this time?  She was used to not remembering her dreams, but not recalling her waking hours too?  Could she have possibly been sleep walking?  It seemed unrealistic since she had never done so before, but what other explanation did she have?

As if by habit, or perhaps instinct, her aimless gaze was drawn to the portrait above her couch.

She froze.

The painting was completely changed.  No longer was the boy asleep on the ground, wrapped by vines and held prisoner in his unconsciousness.  Now he was standing, holding the frame that had been behind him on the wall in front of him, black briar completely missing from the picture.  His eyes were open and could see through both the frame Ib had placed the portrait in and the one he held up in his hands.  His eye gave off a sense of protection and pride that the picture revolved around.  The sleepy frown was replaced with an almost serene smile, though it was too small and laced with resignation to make him look truly happy.  The details had even changed.  Where his blue rose had been captured by the ivy in the previous picture, it was now curled loosely around his throat like a choker and on his cheek was a light indent of a kiss.

But what was most jarring to her was the disappearance of his deep purple jacket.  The jacket that currently hugged her shoulders like a promise.  Or perhaps an apology.

“Garry.”  The name came unbidden to her lips and, with it, a rush of memory.

Ib stumbled to the frame, digging her healed fingers into the sleeves of his jacket.  “Garry,” she repeated as if calling out to him, her voice breaking on his name.

Gripping the frame as if it were his shoulders, she shook it, hoping he could feel it, wherever he was.  “Y-You idiot!” she sobbed.  “You-you said you would be right behind me!  Liar!  Idiot!”

She had done it again.  Left him in the Gallery while she escaped on her own.  She should have insisted that he leave before her!  Had some of the vines escaped the fire or another danger appeared after she had been transported home?  He was still trapped in that nightmare.

Ib grit her teeth and leaned her forehead against his painting as tears streamed down her face.  She _swore_ that she would not forget this time.  She would not let her memories get locked away like he was.  She would not give up on finding a way to help him escape.

The Gallery thought it had won.  But it was underestimating her.


	2. Remembered

Her breathing slowly evened out, a hint to finally wipe the moisture from her eyes and cheeks.  It was unfair, but of course it was.  Why would anything be made easy for her?  This was just another puzzle she needed to solve.  Now if only she knew what pieces she needed to find the picture.

The image of a milk puzzle, glued together and framed on the wall, entered her mind.

If it didn’t show the picture she wanted right away, she could always paint over it.

Ib brought herself up on wobbly knees, holding the wall to keep steady.  She wasn’t planning on wasting time again.  Which meant she couldn’t keep crying on the floor forever.

She needed some tea.  And to get out of her pajamas.

The sight of her unmade bed irked her but she didn’t have the energy to make it.  Instead, she carefully folded Garry’s jacket then threw her pajamas into the hamper as if she meant to burn them later.  Honestly, she should try to get some sleep, but she was too worked up now to even attempt it.

Only once she was dressed and tying up her hair in a high ponytail did she try to get her thoughts in order.  Her paintings appeared in the Gallery and while she didn’t understand why she had every intention of taking advantage of it.  She could paint weapons, doorways, comrades, and barriers that could help against the tricks and mazes that she would be up against.  This time she would go in ready to fight.

Not bothering with shoes, Ib picked up Garry’s jacket again to wear over her fresh clothes.

_Ting._

She stopped at the sound of metal against her concrete floor.  Frowning, she couldn’t see anything immediately but knelt to check under the bed.  Her eyes widened as her fingers clasped around cool metal and she lifted a gold key up.

The light reflected off its smooth surface and shone into the determination in her eyes.  She was going back there and this time she was going to _win._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading everyone!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you don't all hate me, haha.
> 
> Your turn! Tell me how Ib manages to save Garry ;)
> 
> Thank you to EvilAnimeRocks and DuckyPerson who read over this first to help me work out the kinks!
> 
> And thank you to TheEchoingSoul who inspired me to write this! Their "White Roses" Ib fic is so fun to read and totally got me into the mindset to write this. If you don't mind incomplete fics I totally recommend it!


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